


tender moments in less tender places

by tnevmucric



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Choking, Dialogue Heavy, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Will Graham Knows, only a bit, set around s1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 11:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: a closeness like that





	tender moments in less tender places

In it's own post-coital way, Baltimore wanted to swallow him whole, apologise for too much teeth and not enough tongue before stripping him of any grounding thoughts. With a lackless gag reflex and incisors that pulled, Maryland sunk into his bones and invested time there: coiling in his marrow until the cancer self-sustained and became first nature to his body. Baltimore followed after— Baltimore would always follow.

Will speaks quietly over the distance the office supplies. Despite his continual insistence to sit anywhere but the psychiatric stereotype, he chooses to lie at the _chaise longue_ — decidedly out of place and simpering at once. His glasses are absent and one leg sways off the side; he holds the air of a comfortable man and yet the unwashed disorder of his hair punctures that vision, collapsing it before his psyche in a beg for attention. He seems close to falling asleep, but the reverent motion of his thumb in his palm lets Hannibal know he's deep in thought.

"Men-", he starts and stops, stalling in the crowded car park that is his current mindset. His tongue darts from his mouth nervously, undoubtedly smearing the rose vaseline from his lips to his tongue. "They are... _aggressive_."

"Arguably, human nature itself is aggressive", Hannibal counters and Will's features twitch with surfacing agitation, his hands stopping their ministrations abruptly in order to shift him on his side. Something about the image should be blatantly unorthodox, and yet Will's sunken skin diminishes that line of thinking completely. He looks like a child: sleepless and faint.

"They harbour this aggressive dread, as if at the first sign of splintering they would rather be ready to snap than spiral. God, to them, suffers inside of their bodies because God stands with his creations. Men want to die from their own hand— _God's_ hand."

Hannibal wavers to the tone of Will's words; overridden and emotionally charged, they burn the ears of the walls, foregoing any warning. "A terrible devotion to self mutilation", he comments and Will moves to lay on his back again in lieu of answer, fingers stressing at his sweater this time.

"They want so _achingly_ to be human, Hannibal. They would do as much to pass as any other and yet cannot obtain it. They exist and cannot stand to, and their narcissism fuels into-", he glances at Hannibal through lidded eyes. "Everything they create becomes art."

If there is an insinuation there then both choose to ignore it. 

"And a woman cannot do such things?", Hannibal asks eventually. Will shakes his head, but it comes off as a lethargic roll.

"I've stepped into the shoes of women. Their pointed heels, their clasped ankles... women commit crimes of passion and personal gain. There is always _reasoning_ , no matter the mental diagnosis or lack thereof. Men... men hold the power over life as a _gift_."

"You believe gender differentiates capability?"

"Maybe I'm sexist", Will replies readily, as if answering both the underlined and the unspoken. "Maybe I'm reacting."

"What are you reacting to, Will?"

 _Just a moment_ , his brain seems to exhale into the room: sweet smelling and docile. _Fall down._ He squints at nothing.

"They follow me home and wait for me to stumble." His clothes are loud, denim grating uncomfortably on both sets of ears. "They fuck me. There are no words of mercy because I suffer as my biology intends; quietly, nervously, and without haste. I am delicious, to them, and God greets me, holds me, and tells me how well I have done. I even wonder if they can all hear what I think and crave. I wonder if they step into me as I step into them— and whether the violation is a two-way street or a consensual mayhem." He breathes in audible pleasure, a shiver tensing his arms and his cheeks flushed a quiet pink.

"Your tongue unravels like a poet", Hannibal watches Will's stare wander to him. "If others were to weep, perhaps they would understand your language."

"Do you weep?"

Will's phone is a sudden and blaring obstruction in the room, the overbearing presence of Jack Crawford immediately an annoyance and the two let it ring six times before the office is quiet again. Will pulls at his sleeves absently, face pressed to the backing of the chair.

"I wish you could see it", he murmurs. "This sharp, bleeding contrast in my brain... I glow in the dark to killers. You could see."

"I am under the impression you have been speaking from a case and not personal experience."

"The two overlap nowadays."

"The Ripper rips inside of you."

"He fulfills me", Will corrects. "The others... the others wear death masks and swarm in filed lines, waiting to get their piece from my corpse. They like that I'm something to be won or gained. I often wonder if their souls find comfort in mine because I'm capable of what they're doing. Because of this... this _burden_."

"Rare gifts-"

"I take gifts with a grain of salt", Will interrupts. "I'm not going to compliment someones ability to connect with others and be the perfect blank canvas when with a turn of their head they spit on the unworthy."

"And who are you?", Hannibal questions, clasping his fingers in his lap. "The canvas or the unworthy?"

"Whoever I feel like."

A small smile curls Hannibal's lips. "The best of us can barely see through our skin suits, sweet William", and it's a surety that Will can hear the beg of a single smile, there.

"If weeping is the requirement to feast on my empathy, I wonder then what the requirement is to view your divinity."

"Do you view the Ripper as your God?"

The reaction is subtle and sharp, and Hannibal watches Will cauterize the gaping wound out of which his trusting tongue gushes from. Internally, he struggles and bounds from topic to topic, barely touching the strings that pull him together from the seams.

"Rooms grow warmer in your absence", Will comments briefly, running a hand through his hair and looking upwards to the lights. Hannibal tilts his head.

"Oh?"

"You carry the cold", Will affirms. "Doctor, I have dreams where everything simmers at my ankles and boils me from the bottom up— shutting down my stomach and my brain, first. I let it."

"You would cheat yourself of life?"

"Perhaps", Will lingers, "if I had a bad day."

"You don't mean that."

"I don't", they share a look, "but the thought dictates me sometimes. The power man has, the power to end a life, it's intoxicating."

"And yet you choose your own life to demean", Hannibal points out, Will shaking his head insistently.

"It reminds me I'm alive."

"A vicious cycle, then."

"Yes."

"What else do you dream of?"

Will's toes curl and his ankles roll, not too dissimilar to a stretching cat yet the only sun Will receives is the less than harsh lighting of psychoanalysis.

"The high tide at morning", he answers, fingers straying to his stomach and tracing lamely there, decidedly patient behind a thin lense. "They are cold waves, overblown and rushing. They smell of rot and I am somewhere I don't recognise."

"Are you alone?"

"No", Will murmurs, his knees draw up. "You're with me, and I ask you what you would do if the Atlantic Ocean were to suddenly collapsed itself within our room"

Hannibal is expressionless across from Will's growing heat.

"Drown", he watches Will's shoulders relax. "I would serve no purpose otherwise." The younger man closes his eyes and lulls his head to the ceiling again, fists unwilling to let go of his clothes.

"Sometimes we fall together into the water— this distilled kind of grey, or the greening of a pool. Limp but still breathing, sometimes frantic and engorging."

"Fear", Hannibal dictates. "Sex. You use them interchangeably."

"I suppose I do."

"Do you often have dreams of disarm?"

"If I said yes", Will's presence fills the room alarmingly fast, "If I said they pushed me down the Ripper's path and if I promised you I'd end a life, would you tie zipties around my promise?" He holds his open hand above him, spread fingers lacking their usual quiver. "Two zipties", he suggests. "Just to keep me sane."

"Is that what you need?", Hannibal watches him drop his hand back to his stomach. "To feel sane?"

"No", Will answers honestly. "I believe I need to remind myself, through whatever course, what my sanity manifests as. To feel sane is a different thing enitrely but to _recognise_ it..."

"To follow through with the knowledge that you are actively defying sanity", Hannibal completes. "That you are just like every other man you have walked through, biologically targeted towards animosity."

"My God", Will caves, "My God holds my head in his hands, ready to snap as per course. My spine, my body, are twisted into intricacies and I am _disembowled_ , I am severed and when he touches my skin there is adoration there, through the eye of an artisan though it may be." The flush deepens on his face and he licks his lips again. "He kills me and I am dead. He kills me and I am reborn, _constantly_ , within his image. His _art_."

"You are in love with the Ripper."

"To fall in love with the knowledge of reciprocation, Hannibal", Will breathes, and his fingers twitching on his thigh aside his growing erection. He writhes. "Give me your professional opinion. What damage could it do?"

 _Irreparable_ , Hannibal decides in a moment.

"It's enough to kill a man."

"I feel like there are bleeding holes in my head", Will confesses, an arm dropping outwards of the lounge— reaching, Hannibal notes.

"What do you bleed, Will?"

"Dust", Will breathes a sigh, his eyes rolling back. "Just dust. Sometimes I don't even think my heart's beating. Is my heart beating, Doctor?"

The invitation is there: blatant, forgiving and accepting. Begging. It takes little more for Hannibal to cross the room and satisfying second, he stands over the lounge, over Will, like a God unto his creation: untouching but all-seeing. He sits carefully, ignoring the quiet whimper from Will and in the taboo hush of the room, holds his throat in his hand— Will's outstretched palm claims purchase on his thigh when Hannibal's fingers press down.

"Fiercely."

Will unravels under that hand, something like chamomile flowers falling from his eyes and a desperation forcing him to overblink.

"Oh", Will breathes, "which part of me would you dine on first?"

Hannibal wants to savour the blue of his eye.

"You live in the tense where a never ending conversation plays out to an inattentive audience", Will cites, face growing redder when he reaches to push Hannibal's fingers deeper. "You feel achingly human. You crave the disassociation from your body which your own status allows."

Hannibal's gaze is a levelled thing, something Will believes is too alike to the rivers in Wolf Trap. The psychiatrist squeezes his throat once more with appraising eyes.

"Where do you go when there is no new killer to divulge in?"

"Baltimore", Will gasps like a confession. "Here. To rooms I've seen in crime scene photos and with eyes so easy to look through. I always expect to meet him there— for him to meet me halfway and kill me before I get the chance to look. I look for _him_."

"Who is he?", Hannibal growls.

"God", Will whispers.


End file.
